College of Agriculture Students Place 3rd in National Food Marketing Challenge

Five California State University, Chico students traveled to Chicago to the Food Distribution Research Society’s annual meeting Oct. 4–7 to compete in the 2013 Student Food Marketing Challenge. The students who attended and competed are Angela Faryan, Amie French, Katelyn Hicks, Daniel Menzies and Cecilia Wilson.

The competition asked teams as consulting companies to propose methods and innovative ideas to increase the retention of the current millennial generation employees at the Chicago Meat Authority Company. Students presented proposals less than 10 hours after being presented the issue. The Chico State team advanced to the final round and presented their edited and revised presentation to two corporate managers from the Chicago Meat Authority on Sunday. The Chico State team received third place and an award of $200 for their research and presentation. Seven universities total competed including California State University, Fresno, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, Texas A&M University, Louisiana State University, Colorado State University and University of Kentucky.

Dr. Baohui Song believes the students gained knowledge, experience and presentations skills from the trip. “Although the issue faced was an unusual topic, dealing with a human resource issue, and was not something the team prepared for, they all gained knowledge of the issue, great experience and practice for professional presentations.”